


Mercy

by neomeruru



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bad end, Betrayal, Canon Divergence, M/M, Trespasser Spoilers, onq raq
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 21:56:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4803668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neomeruru/pseuds/neomeruru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every part of Bull belongs to the Qun, but they cannot have his heart. Bad end, canon-divergent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mercy

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to [amurderof](http://archiveofourown.org/users/amurderof) for some of the dialogue inspiration, and to [iambic](http://archiveofourown.org/users/iambic) for the beta.

The moon is high over Halamshiral and the Winter Palace when Dorian slips into Bull's room, checking the hallway behind him before locking the door.

"Old habits," Bull smiles, bare feet soundless on the carpet as he crosses the room.

"Old habits," Dorian agrees, turning to let himself be enfolded in Bull's arms and lifted into his embrace. His legs fit around Bull's waist as they always have, as do his arms around Bull's neck, and as his back hits the door he is delighted to find that their lips have not forgotten each other either.

"Heard the Tevinter ambassador was here," Bull growls into Dorian's mouth, already popping the buckles on Dorian's belts with the hand not fisted in his hair. "Got a bit of a thing for 'Vints, you know."

Dorian laughs as Bull's hand finds its way into his trousers, through so many layers of clothing. "An ambassador! Aim high, I suppose. Though, what would your lover say?"

Bull chuckles and shifts Dorian on his thigh just to hear him groan, and bends his head to suck a dark, biting mark into his neck. "Fuck him," he rumbles, and Dorian's scandalized laughter carries them all the way to the bed.

—-

Afterwards, the silence is companionable, broken only by the night's sounds wafting in through the open balcony door: the murmur of the fountains, crickets in the bushes, a shrill but delighted laugh from the open window of another room. Cullen's lost mabari barks down in the courtyard, disturbing a swell of bullfrogs to croaking.

Shoulder to shoulder on a sincerely ostentatious divan, the Iron Bull and Dorian share a bottle of muddy Orlesian red, as comfortable in their silence as they are in their coupling. Neither of them had been particularly undressed — though honestly, what is the difference to Bull — which suits Dorian just fine; the perfumed breeze through the door does just as well.

Dorian drinks from his glass, frowning a little at the taste. Orlesian wine is a poor substitute for wine from Tevinter, the summers too cold and wet for the grapes. He intends to tell Bull as much, when—

"The qunari are smuggling _gaatlok_ through the eluvians," Bull says first, apropos of nothing. He swirls his wine in the glass, not drinking. Dorian doesn't blame him.

"Yes, I've heard news of the day's events," Dorian answers, resting his head on the back of the divan. "Not a terrible strategy. I would be lying if I said the South couldn't use a bit of a makeover. It worked so well in Kirkwall. It's too bad the Inquisitor had to put a stop to it."

The Bull chuckles, sets his wine glass on the table. "He hasn't done a damn thing. Knowing a problem exists isn't the same as solving it."

Dorian arches an eyebrow at him. "How uncharacteristically unsupportive of you."

Bull shrugs, rubs his knee idly. Dorian raises a hand to it with a questioning look, the rune for heat already glowing a few inches from his palm, but Bull waves him away. Dorian shrugs and takes another drink, wincing again before returning his head to the divan. Bull continues, "The _gaatlok_ is the stone that sits midway up the mountain. Remove it, and the mountain will still come down on your head. The dead qunari is another one. Remember what I said about a _beresaad_ in full armor?"

Dorian thinks for a moment and laughs. "'Run, because it's war?' Is there to be a war, then?"

Bull doesn't laugh, nor even smile. His eye is flinty, his gaze far away. "A war. A reckoning, for some poor bastards. It'll put this Exalted Council bullshit to shame."

Dorian turns his head to look at Bull. "You sound entirely certain."

"I am," Bull concedes. "It's coming. I felt you should know, _kadan_."

"Ominous," Dorian scoffs, then pauses. "You're… serious," he says. "You know what's going on. Of course you do."

"I know enough," Bull says, shrugging. "'Sleeper agent' has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"

Dorian stares at him a good few seconds, searching his face for some sign he's joking. But Bull's face is a stone, as blank as a page. What had been only a sense of unease curdles and hardens in his stomach, becomes a grisly, cold despair as the last three years recontextualize in his memory, piece by piece. "No," he says, surprised to find the word come out weak, bewildered even. "This whole time?"

Bull blows a breath through his lips, considering. "I told the Inquisitor I was a spy, the day we met. I've never claimed to be anything else. Don't tell me you're surprised."

Dorian sits forward, scrubs a hand over his face. "No, I suppose I'm not. _Kaffas_ , you must be proud. The first and only person to make me believe they actually cared about me."

"Dorian," Bull says, gently, "I did. I do, still."

"And love?" Dorian asks, unable to keep from picking at the wound. Betrayed. The word for what he feels is betrayed. He didn't think he had it in him.

Bull frowns, shakes his head. "The part of me that thought I could love anything as much as I need the Qun died on the Storm Coast. The Inquisitor saw to that."

"Why tell me now?" Dorian asks, rolling the wine glass between his hands. His palms are wet. "Surely, you can't expect me sit on this."

Bull only regards him with one eye, waiting for Dorian to put it together. Never letting on more than he needs, always letting Dorian come to him, that was the Bull. Patient. Pragmatic.

"You don't expect I'll leave this room alive, do you," Dorian answers for him, and the look on Bull's face is enough.

Dorian drains his glass before returning it to the table. He sits straight on the divan, pushes the glass across the table with his fingertips as if in thought. "You know, I expected to be assassinated eventually, but I must say, I am surprised nonetheless. It's been quite some time since I thought you might murder me in my sleep."

Bull shakes his head, one horn dipping to the side. "Not in your sleep. You deserve better than that. And… you deserve better than what the Qun does to mouthy little _bas saarebas_."

Dorian makes a disgusted noise. "If you expect me to thank you—"

"No," Bull interrupts, "I—"

Dorian interrupts him right back, "It's nothing personal, I suppose."

Bull flinches, a movement so subtle anyone but Dorian could have missed it. "It is personal," he says, quietly. "You are my heart, Dorian. Every part of me belongs to the Qun, except for one. When they come for me, and they will, they will expect all of me." He sighs and puts one hand over Dorian's on the divan. "But they cannot have you."

Dorian lets his hand be held, and uses the other to shroud his face. He swears softly into his palm, willing a few stubborn tears out of existence. "Only you would think you could convince someone their death was in their best interest," he mutters, and if it comes out fond he hates himself for it, hates Bull for destroying him.

He feels Bull's thumb caress the delicate skin under his eye, leans into his hand just a little. He takes a fortifying breath and rises to his feet, straightening his robes.

The Bull stands as well, tension barely perceivable in the line of his shoulders, in the way he shifts his weight to his back foot for power. Little things, plain to Dorian after so many years as he undoubtedly is to the Bull. Little parts of one's lover become a part of you, nestling in your bones without your noticing. "Gonna fight me, now?" Bull asks, his mouth a wry line, "You know you're not gonna win."

Dorian sighs. "I will not raise a hand against you. I cannot." He begins to remove his rings, depositing them on the table, _clink-clink_ one by one into the pregnant silences between his words. "I have loved you... so deeply, and for so long. I have already died by your hand, _amatus_."

He finishes removing his rings and starts on the heavy clasp of his cloak, not looking Bull in the eye. The fabric parts, baring his neck. His fingers tremble and he hopes it's not obvious. Hopes he goes to his death with some dignity.

The dragon's tooth necklace catches as he pulls it free of the collar of his shirt, and he discards it on the table with the rest of his material things. Stepping forward into the circle of Bull's arms, he places one hand on his broad chest and leans into him. "Quick and painless, if you please, Hissrad."

Hissrad's hands come up to cup his face. Yes. Quick. Painless. As easy as giving up. If the change of address wounds him, there is no hint of it in gentleness of his hands cradling Dorian's head. "There's no such thing," he says, and Dorian is not so sentimental to believe that he feels remorse in his voice. "One or the other. I chose painless."

"I see," Dorian says, and a laugh almost follows it, he can feel it bubbling up in his throat. It comes out dry, bitter. He chokes on it. "Maker forbid you _hurt_ me."

There is a heaviness in his heart. He breathes, and feels it come sharper than the last, like cold mountain air piercing his lungs, a thousand pinprick wounds, the taste of iron acrid in the back of his throat. His hand on Bull's chest swims, and he blinks rapidly to clear his vision but it only makes it worse. Completely unbidden, his body slumps into Hissrad's embrace.

"What a terrible waste of a terrible wine," he mutters into Hissrad's naked chest. Hissrad's hands stroke down his back, their path like fire on his skin, prickling with phantom pain: too cold, then too hot, electric.

Hissrad chuckles. "You'd have noticed the taste if I used your fancy imported shit. It's lousy for flavour, but at least it doesn't hurt, and it doesn't take long, not after you start to feel it," he says. His voice sounds far away.

"How considerate," Dorian murmurs.

He thinks, momentarily, of how easy it would be trigger an explosion between the two of them, something beautiful and poetic in its mutual destruction, but the thought is like rain sluicing off a roof. In its place is the awareness that he had once had a thought, but not its content. The magic, the _will_ , is simply gone. He feels, in an abstract way, that he should be alarmed by that, but even that feeling is lodged in a place his mind's eye passes over without stopping.

And then the floor is under Dorian's knees, and the world lurches up and sideways a few seconds later, out of sync, a drunken man trying to find his bed. Hissrad's big arms anchor him to this plane, keeping his mind from fleeing the crumbling prison of his body. It's perversely comforting to submit to Hissrad one last time, cradled against the body he knows so well.

"This is where you say you're sorry," Dorian says. The quiver that started in his hands has taken residence in the rest of him now, his whole body tremulous, his heart a seizure, a bird frantic in its cage. "A little—" he starts, bitten off by a convulsion that snaps his teeth shut. His body fights the inevitable like an animal in a trap. "A little white lie to ease the passing."

Hissrad says nothing and the silence stretches, and it infuriates Dorian. He swings wildly, coming into contact with Hissrad's dragon tooth necklace by pure chance, but his fingers grip true. "Maker take you! Don't stop lying on my account!"

Hissrad's mouth opens, closes. "I am not sorry for sparing you the coming storm, _kadan_." The backs of his knuckles brush against Dorian's cheek. "I do not do this easily. But you... deserved a private death."

Dorian's fingers slip from the necklace string. He'd hoped to snap it, but he hasn't the strength. If his nails gouge Hissrad's chest on the way down, neither pay it any heed. Dorian's head is too heavy, the ground too welcoming. Somnolescence washes over him, warm and calming. Hissrad's hand under his head guides him to the ground, cushions him gently on the plush carpet, protective to the last.

"You have my thanks, Hissrad," he gasps through his teeth. Swallows around a lump in his throat. Dredging up the effort to speak is like drawing water from a dry well, the words just as muddy and brackish to his tongue. "I had always thought… my life was nothing more than one painful lie after another… it is good to know I was right."

"You were my best lie," Hissrad agrees, brushing his hair away from his forehead. His fingers are cool.

Dorian wants to say more. He wants to say much more. He doesn't want to die, not exactly, but if he must, he wants to at least go peaceably, wants to go to the Fade like a man going to the arms of a lover. A deep and abiding sense of loss nestles in his chest and pushes out everything else.

And then, nothing at all.

—-

Hissrad passes his hand over Dorian's face, gently closing his eyelids and his parted lips. His face is still and relaxed in death, untroubled by the struggle he carried within him in life. Without the mind, the body is as dust. But still. Carefully, Hissrad slips his hand out from under Dorian's heavy head, placing it gently on the carpet.

When he rises to his feet it's almost comical how small Dorian seems, laid out on the floor. He wants to cover Dorian's body with a blanket, to give him the respect he could not give Krem and his boys, but it would ruin the illusion he must make. _Asit tal-eb_.

He takes a deep breath and lets it kindle the ashes of the pain he'd been letting smolder in his breast. It's nothing to unleash it, to let it pour out of him as he stumbles to the door, bellowing at the top of his lungs.

"Please!" he sobs as he throws the door open, barrelling into the posted guards that struggle to keep him upright. "Get the Inquisitor! Dorian's been poisoned!"

The tears, at least, burn as if they are real.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry.
> 
> I draw things! Find me on [Tumblr](http://chaoslindsay.tumblr.com).


End file.
